


Before Tomorrow, After Yesterday

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [100]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:13:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9195647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: Dating is complicated when you're a time-traveler.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for anon, who requested: Erm. Clara/Osgood/Osgood smut? Post-Hell Bent? Maybe Clara tryna figure out which one's a Zygon so there can be some doppleganger fun?

Clara Oswald is having a one night stand. Two women, the same woman, circle her. Nervous but anticipatory, and more graceful together than they are alone.

This is before. The past, as it were.

She raises her arms and lets one of them slide the zip on her back down, the other slide her blouse up, off. One of them will die, later. The other she’ll fail to help. The future is a physical ache in her chest, a knot in her throat. But she’s here, now.

She kisses one and then the other. They squeeze each other’s hand and branch off around her, moving in sync. 

 

* * *

 

The UNIT cantina, grey as it is overlit. Generic contemporary government space in the 2010s. A non-place, it’ll be hideously dated in a decade. Paper cups of weak lukewarm tea, stale pastries. A whole world between them, echoed horribly in this cavernous ex-military building.

Clara’s just now understanding what the look in Osgood’s eyes means. When Osgood looks at her like she’s looking for something in particular.

“Has it happened for you?” Osgood asks. “Us, I mean.” Tentative, like she’s got a good hunch but is still only guessing.

“Always has, technically,” Clara says.

“But it was recent for you.”

Last night, for whatever meaning ‘last’ or ‘night’ have anymore. “Yeah,” she says.

“How…” Osgood breaks off, pauses, her hand over her mouth. Swallowing something down. “How was it?”

“You were beautiful,” Clara says, briefly touching Osgood’s arm. “All of you.”

 

* * *

 

This is before the before, now.

Clara’s not UNIT, not yet, but she is an official contact. And she’s contacted, unofficially.

“I like you,” Osgood says, over a cup of tea and artisanal biscuit, in a rustic-modern cafe.

“And I like you,” Osgood says, over a mug of hot cocoa and artisanal pastry, in a performance of the imagined traditional cafe.

Wood and brass everything, artificially aged surfaces. The facsimile of the past, a warmer and more comfortable memory of then in the world it is now. Faux-nostalgia for a world none of them have lived in. Couches with pillows and mismatched chairs, reproduction tin signs on the walls.

“We like you,” they say together. They giggle, and nudge each other playfully, and blush in matching patterns.

“ _Like-you,_ like you,” one of them specifies.

“And we, um. We try to share things, as much as we can,” says the other.

Clara takes a sip of her espresso, delicately cradling the tiny cup. “Okay,” she says, feeling the steam on the tip of her nose.

“We just want to know if you’d be interested,” Osgood says.

“In going on a date,” Osgood says.

“With us. Or not a date, maybe.”

“Maybe just. Hanging out?”

“It’s a silly idea, sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. We promised, remember?”

“Sor- right. No. Yeah.”

Clara sets her cup down precisely, the remaining eighth-inch of espresso sure to rapidly grow cold. “I don’t date much, anymore.”

“Of course,” Osgood says.

“Really?” Osgood asks, simultaneously.

“But we could. Hang out, yeah.” What Clara would like to say is ‘we could fuck’, but she’s found her particular brand of post-everything sexual pragmaticism doesn’t tend to go over well. She settles for a loaded glance.

“Right,” Osgood says, blushing again.

“Tomorrow?” Osgood asks, not blushing but fidgeting slightly.

Tomorrow, for whatever meaning ‘tomorrow’ has anymore.

 

* * *

 

After the before: She is raising her arms and Osgood is unhooking her bra, and Osgood is unbuttoning her trousers. Osgood who she kisses sweetly, Osgood who is doing filthy, transcendent things with her tongue and her hands underneath Clara’s panties.

The future is a distant memory. Clara gasps, and whines, and fists her hands tight in Osgood’s hair, below her, and wraps her hand gently around Osgood’s neck, adjacent. The now is an insistent ache in her cunt, building and building as the two of them join hands between her legs. Four hands on her, on her breasts and her belly and her clit. Two mouths, kissing a trail down her skin, teeth bared and occasionally used. One voice, in unison, saying her name.

 

* * *

 

“She was beautiful,” Osgood says, after the after. “I don’t mean that in a narcissistic way, I just.” She shrugs, slouches.

“You are,” Clara says emphatically. As in: _you are the both of you, always, and you are beautiful, always._

Osgood blushes, shakes her head. Some better angel moving her shoulders straight, though. “I know you don’t date, but. I’m free tomorrow.”

'Tomorrow’ means nothing, really. “So am I,” Clara says. She smiles and takes Osgood’s hand, turning it palm-up, watching her shiver as she runs a fingertip along her skin, down past her wrist.

“Great. Ok. ‘Til then.” Osgood smiles, and gestures, _like back to work now_ , and stands up.

Clara nods, smiling back. The future is a heavy thing inside her, and a promise. Or maybe that’s just the ill-advised croissant she’d eaten. Either/or. She tries to remember where she’d parked the TARDIS, and makes a note in her mental schedule, and watches Osgood as she crosses the cafeteria, to the doors to the halls to where her Now is.

Not a fixed point, but an anchor. Tomorrow, then.


End file.
